A Glimse into the Covenant
by Running on Fumes
Summary: this is where I will be posting my halo one shots. I think this provides a lot of insight to the atrocities of the Human-Covenant War. each one shot is an individual event not part of the halo story itself. I will add as I write more.
1. POW

Halo one shot roll call in a Covanant cell block

Halo one shot: roll call in a Covenant cell block

POW

The cell gates creaked and ground open. The dingy, dirty UNSC personnel lining up out side their cells waiting in silence for the announcement of today's execution. Sergeant Wills was the last one out of his cell, because of his missing leg.

He lost it shortly after they were captured. A jackal got hungry and shot his leg off with rapid Plasma Pistol fire. Wills had screamed and flung himself at the jackal, his stump burned and dry, it wasn't bleeding. He hit the jackal in the face with a straight right and shattered the things upper jaw and then he seized the pistol from its grip and started firing into the jackal's gut and didn't stop until he was hit over the head by an elite.

When Wills woke up later that day he was in a cell and stayed there until roll. The other occupants informed him of the goings on.

Everyday was the same. Roll call, then one would be led to public execution, breakfast. Several hours later dinner came by and finally lights out…repeat.

Today was no different, a man was selected, Wills, and then breakfast. Wills shoved the Covenant off of himself and followed as best he could, hopping and falling the whole way. Ahead of him one of the Elites guarding him gave him a smirk; its gold armor shiny beneath the silvery lights.

Outside he hopped still, waving his stump about for balance. An elite in red armor cuffed him up, leaving his only leg free, and faced him to a clamoring crowd. The gold Elite got in his face again, "I could have killed you when I brought you here…but this is better."

"Yeah," said Wills coolly, "Now I can kill you too."

"Such foolish last words, human." The Elite turned to the crowd and felt a boot connect with his ass. He lurched toward the edge. Wills had kicked him in the ass and twisted out of his seals.

Wills hit the deck hard; third degree burns covered his hands. He cried out in pain but came after the Elite through the blinding agony. Wills planted his foot and tackled the Gold Elite carrying them both out over the 500-story drop.

Wills maneuvered against the air to get his mouth next to the Elite's ear, "Not such foolish words were they?"

The Elite's face contorted with anger and he reached for his rifle but Wills had ballooned his tattered jacket as an air break. The Elite snarled and drew a bead on Wills…the crowd's jeers and yells made him dizzy and he fired wildly.

Wills was safe and just grinned that wide mocking grin of his. He adjusted himself for a better view of the ground and watched the Elite splatter on the ground far below him. Pedestrians gathered and Wills spun himself just in time to make a 220 mph kick to the unprotected neck of a hunter. Snapping his leg and the hunter's neck.

Wills was jarred sideways and never felt himself shredded by the spikes on the hunter's back. Wills' body was dumped into space, the event broad cast to the fleet, every human gave a solute before a seraph fight desecrated his torn and broken body.

I wont sit by and die quietly. I want something flashy and one of the bastards for company. –Sergeant Joey Michael Wills

Sgt. Joey M. Wills UNSC ODST Serial No. 518-44-JMW45-5820

Born July 16, 2530; Died July 9, 2551

Took two of the bastards with him for company.


	2. Tears and Sorrow

A/N: this one looks into the aftermath of a human defeat on the ground

A/N: this one looks into the aftermath of a human defeat on the ground. It is rather dark but I hope I did a good job trying to show you this. War isn't fun and games, and neither the game nor the books really did this facet justice, so I decided to take a crack at it. Please read and then leave your thoughts in a review.

Tears on Sorrow

Sobs wracked the body of a soldier; tears streaked his face. All around him were the chard bodies of his fallen friends…no, the dead around him were more than just his fellow soldiers. They were his family.

Here at the orbital generators on reach, so far from home, all his friends had died.

The images of his friends faces, smiling happy, part of one big happy family; they flashed through his mind like a forest fire through matches.

All around him heavy black smoke plumed into the air. The air thick and heavy with the smell of blood and burnt flesh.

His sobbing burst forth in a fresh wave of grief. He stood up, cradling his mutilated arm. Torn to shreds by shrapnel, bits of flesh dangling from the shattered bone. He staggered toward his best friend. Her body melted from a plasma mortar. Her head and upper torso missing.

Dropping to his knees he gently cradled her corps. He pulled the lifeless arm that hung limp from her body towards himself and clumsily pulled out his dog tags. On it were two rings. He pulled them off and slipped one on his own finger and whispered in a sob choked voice, "will you marry me?"

He felt him self break, he screamed his loss to the horror around him. Slowly he pulled her close to him and hugged the corpse tightly.

Then suddenly this tears stopped. Almost as if he were in a daze, he stood up and looked for his sergeant's body. It was not far away, both legs gone below the knee and a great gash in his neck where something had hit him. In his now lifeless hand was an assault rifle, a fresh magazine on the ground beside it.

The crying man picked it up and saluted the dead body before him. Assault rifle in hand he made his way on to find the bodies of his childhood friends. The two were in a shallow crater, slumped back to back, a sea of dead grunts around them. Their chests slashed open by an elite's plasma sword.

He stumbled toward them, tripping over bodies. At the lip of the crater he kicked a body with his foot and a grenade went off. He went flying through the air, one of his legs gone.

He landed face down, the dirt covering his face. He rolled over, more tears for his fallen friends spewing forth from his eyes. All around him were spent shell casings and empty magazines, grenade pins and blood.

The man dragged himself to his friends' bodies and sat down, staring straight ahead, their bodies still luke-warm to the touch. _If only I hadn't tried to save her, all three of us might have been getting drunk now…_ he thought to himself, suddenly angry at himself for thinking. No, it should have been him that died, not them. He would die a million slow painful deaths for them, all of them. He squeezed the grip of the assault rifle tightly, he wanted to cry, but no more tears would come.

The smoke burned his eyes, the stench of blood choked him, the feeling of dirt in his various wounds ached; all insignificant in the massive pain in his heart. Everyone he knew was dead…and soon to be forgotten when he died. Through the smoke he saw a shape approaching him.

It was outlined as a large hunched figure, sleek and deadly looking. The man looked at the edge of the crater for something he could use. Nothing, just the corpse of a dead elite off to his right, plasma sword shimmering in the elite's death grip.

It was too far for the soldier to reach in time, so he gripped the rifle tightly and brought it to bear.

The elite emerged from the smoke at the lip of the crater in front of him. From its grasp hung nothing but a depleted plasma rifle, its battery casing dark and gray.

The soldier's body wracked with dry sobs, his finger closing on the trigger a torrent of gunfire tore into the elite. Most of the rounds straying from the intended target and out across the battlefield. The Elite just stood there and did nothing.

The soldier frantically squeezed the trigger, willing the clip to fill itself. The rifle clicked dryly in his hands. The soldier bowed his head, the rifle slipping from his grasp and thudded into the dirt, a solitary tear slid down his face and dripped onto his thigh.

The elite crossed the crater and sat down in front of him, pulling a flat disk from a slot in its armor. He pressed a button on the side and an image displayed itself on the surface. The soldier gawked at it. There was one obvious female, a child, and a male, wearing the same red armor as the elite next to him.

The soldier removed his helmet and placed it on his remaining knee. He reached for the disk but it was pulled away from him. The soldier felt his body going numb, he flipped over his helmet and grabbed a packet. The helmet fell to the ground forgotten.

In the packet were a few photos of him and his friends. One of him and his two friends in child hood, arms around their shoulders in front of a green oak tree. The next was a picture of the three of them in high school under the same tree. The third was of them in their armor in front of a wall that read "UNSC" the fourth was them in their squad photo, all dressed fancy in their black dress uniforms. The last picture was of him and his dead girlfriend, both in armor, drunk as hell and kissing on the pelican on the way back from R&R.

The elite pointed back to the third picture and the man clumsily shuffled back to it, blood and grit smearing the pictures. The elite pointed to the men in the picture, right to left. The man on the right was him so the soldier pointed at himself, then the men he sat propped against respectively. The soldier saw the world blur and dim around him, silence pressing in on his ears. Fearfully he held the photos close to his chest with his good hand and another tear fell from his red swollen eyes, down his tear streaked face, and then in landed in the elite's out stretched hand.

The soldier watched as blackness filled his mind, then nothing…he was no more.

The elite in front of him lifted the man's head with one long arm and gazed into the lifeless eyes of the creature in front of it. It occurred then to the elite that all of his kind was old enough that they often had a wife a child before they were drafted into service; but this human seemed to have been drafted before finding a wife, with his childhood friends.

Standing up slowly he considered, _I am lucky to have found a loving wife and bear a child before I was sentenced to death. These humans are unfortunate to have so little life lived before we kill them. I wonder why? They have never attacked us, nor are they terrible creatures. Why must we kill them when we are so much the same?_

The elite dismissed the question and continued on its way.


	3. Finest Hour

_This is a cannibalized piece I wrote some time ago. I'm still not that pleased with it._

A man by the name of Pat pressed himself flat against the bulk head of the destroyer he was stationed on. He had never particularly liked being in space. The uneven artificial gravity made his guts churn, and the lack of window made him claustrophobic.

In his hands he held an m90 8 gauge shotgun. He had opted for it instead of the assault rifle because it made more sense to use one in close quarters combat like this. He carefully peered around the corner at the heavy armored doors in at the end of the hallway. The crouch and hiding forms of his fellow marines dotted his vision of the door. A line of makeshift barriers had been setup only three yards from the doors. Seven marines huddled underneath this, a mix of assault rifles, shotguns and grenades amongst them.

There was banging on the other side of the door and screams for help, it wrenched at his heart when there was a burst of plasma fire and the voice was silent. Pat waited a tense minute before there was another noise from behind the door. It was a hum. The center of the door grew red hot.

Five more men dashed around the corner behind them, one of them touted a rocket launcher and the other four had divided themselves up to pull a cart full of rocket and squad gun ammo and the massive .50 caliber squad machine gun.

Pat motioned that there was room next to him for the rocket jockey and his partner. The jockey crouched down behind the crate next to Pat, a full ten yards back from the door. The three men in front of the jockey eyed the rocket launcher nervously before slinking off to the other side of the corridor to hide behind a sideways vending machine.

One of the seven men closest to the door was shaking violently, his hand clutching a grenade in a death grip. The steel door now had a great red hot circle in it, a cut groove poking through from the other side. Molten metal ran down the surface of the door and puddled at the base before cooling back to a solid, dull red blob.

Pat checked the safety on his shotgun and rechecked it before he eased open the chamber to check for a round. He felt his heart stop at the sight and quickly shucked the action to load a shell.

Around him it seemed that he had set off a chain reaction of a last minute equipment check. He heard the muted voice of his C.O. trying to steady his men. Pat didn't hear what he was saying because there was suddenly a loud clang of a ram against the cut out portion of the door. The plug lurched toward them and buckled in the middle. The top half of the door moving the opposite direction.

Pat heard a displeased growl form an elite and its long fingers appeared on the top of the cut out, heaving the sheet towards itself. The seven men up front adjusted themselves and waited.

The sheet came of with an ear splitting screech as it fell to the floor. The man who had been shaking pulled the pins on two grenades and stood up completely, throwing them as hard as he could at the elite.

The grenades bounced off its chest and it made a chuckling noise, fluidly raising its plasma rifle to gun him down. The Pat watched the whole thing in horror as the man keeled over backward, his neck burned and his mouth and eyes working furiously to draw in air.

The other six men popped up form behind the barrier and drew a bead on the elite just as the grenades went off, tearing the elite to shreds, the panicked grunts on the other side howled in pain as hot shrapnel tore through their methane rebreathers, detonating them. More shrieks filled the air and the stench of blood, fire, and death wafted through the door. The remaining men up front hurried back from the door to distance themselves from the danger.

They vaulted the first row of barriers and joined the rest of them, the sound of hooves and the "patter-patter" of grunts and elites' "Hurr"-ing to see what had become of their brethren. The grunts came pouring through the door. Pat leaned out from his hiding place and pulled the trigger, the shot gun heaving mightily against his shoulder. He saw eight of the grunts in front knocked back by the shot and he shucked to fire again, but nothing remained. There were numerous hoots and honks from behind the door, then the sound of one elite leaving.

Pat hurriedly stuffed another shotgun shell into the receiver to replace the smoking one on the floor. His breathing slow, surpressed, and shaky. He desperately tried to calm his adrenaline soaked nerves.

For several long minutes nothing happened. Then the tell tale clank of a hunter beyond the gaping maw. In the blackness beyond, a green glow waivered for a moment. Pat ducked back out of sight.

The roaring hiss of the fuel rod cannoned monstrosity broke the tense quite. The corridor erupting with gun fire and explosions. The rocket jockey popped up and loosed both tubes at the behemoth in quick succession. Twin roars of high explosive shook the deck. Grunts screamed in terror, firing wildly though the gap.

Behind them a platoon of marines was taking cover behind bulkheads. One by one they dropped in the span of a minute. Four of them fled further down the corridor, leaving their comrades behind.

The hunter roared in agitation, charging though the opening and bringing its shield down on those seeking shelter behind the first baracade.

"AHHHHH!"

One of them was screaming, half crushed by the monstrosity. Blood and intestines flew wild as the hunter vaulted the barricade, its feet crushing him. Grunts now poured though the opening. The retreating marines fire slacked off as they sought sanctuary behind another row of barricades.

The fifty opened up on the hunter, rounds ricocheting off its shield. It crouched, its body jerking to and fro, yet unharmed. The slugs and their fragments sprayed into the grunts that weren't in the hunter's shadow. A cloud of blue mist developing as more grunts and a few elites pressed inward. A pair of crimson veterans, and a golden commander.

The comander's shields crackled under the barrage. It roared and drew a small metal handle from its hip, a plasma sword ripping the air as it came to life. The commander charged, the other elites following.

Pat dared not breath. The hunter nor the grunts had seen him as they advanced past his alcove. Summoning his courage, and spurred on by the dying screams of his friends and squad mates, Pat resigned himself to incineration.

Courage adorning his fear stricken heart, Pat heaved a frag around the corner, It detonated with enough force to make the failing lights flicker and die. Pat then stepped out from his hole, and fired. The first volley of buckshot shredded a cluster of cowering grunts. In the surreal light of the muzzle flash, he re adjusted his aim and unloaded more death into the exposed back of the hunter, it groaned as orange gore splattered the floor.

Pat shucked the shotgun, and ran.

He ran down a corridor that the elites had bypassed, leaving it to the grunts.

"Clank. Clank. Clank." His boots rang out against the walls. His ears were fuzzy from the noise of the brief engagement. Ahead in the gloom a white bar flashed to light, illuminating the hulking form of an Elite. Pat stopped, Staring. It stared back.

"Human, today is the day you die." It warbled in english.

Pat didn't wait for the Elite to say more, or even move. He shouldered the shotgun and fired.

Once. The Elite began to move.

Twice. The Elite was Sprinting.

Thrice. The shimmering shielding of the elite was holding strong.

Four. The elite was airbourn.

Five. The sword was making a bee line for his chest.

Six.

The shot went wide. The elite having buried the sword in Pat's innards.

The elite laughed, powering down the sword. "You are brave human. There are few who do not run from me. Fewer try to fight. Had you attacked sooner you might have bested me."

A scaled hand grasped the dying man's chest armor, slamming him into the nearest wall. Pat felt the air woosh out of his lungs, his abdomen a sharp throbbing pain, the burnt flesh filling the air with its putrid fumes.

"I will enjoy this human."

The elite pulled out a knife. The plasma blade cracked to life, glowing white before the elite drew a finger across the handle. The blade's heat dropped, a dull red now.

Pat struggled as hard as he could against the had pinning him to the wall, but the elite was as a stone wall. With horror, he watched the elite deftly swap his hold on this chest for one on his wrist. Still suspended off the floor, the knife pierced Pat's hand. Gritting his teeth against the pain, pat writhed, kicked and punched, the elite only chuckled. It's golden armor catching the light of the blade eerily. A fiend in the dark. A demon. A scourge on all innocents.

With a deft flick, his hand was severed from his arm as the knife split his arm in two all the way to the elbow. Pat screamed in agony. The pain was indescribable. Adrenaline long expired, it was raw pain.

The elite seemed to gloat, red blood poured onto the floor, the smell of burnt flesh and iron wrent the air.

"Human, do you have any last words?"

For a moment, Pat looked him in the eyes, his pain so intense it did not register, or Pat was too far gone to care.

"Yeah." He felt strange. Calm, cool, collected. He was in control of his own fate for a moment. His surviving hand scrabbled at the elite's belt.

"Fuck. You."

"Famous last words human." The Elite held the knife between the human's legs, ready to split him in two, the heat searing his balls.

Pat found what he was looking for, and muttered something inaudible.

In a flash, Pat snapped his good hand to the Elite's chest, plasma grenade clutched tight.

Pat pressed the button on the surface, the grenade ignited and fused to both his hand and the Elite's chest.

Pat watched the look of shock and terrified comprehension on the Elite's face as a brilliant white-blue light enveloped the pair.

When the dust settled, a form slumped against the wall, blackened almost beyond recognition. It pushed itself off the floor and stood, its garments making it appear hunch backed.

It walked away, sparks flew from its armor for a few moments, then in a silvery, flickering instant, the being was surrounded by light, then darkness again enveloped the hallway.


End file.
